Ritusamharam

by Kalidasa

  KALIDASA

  RITUSAMHARAM

  A Gathering of Seasons

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Introduction

  Canto 1: Summer

  Canto 2: Monsoon

  Canto 3: Autumn

  Canto 4: Onset of Winter

  Canto 5: Winter

  Canto 6: Spring

  Additional Verses

  Notes

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  P.M.S.

  For my dear daughter-in-law

  Annika

  with all my love

  Introduction

  Kalidasa’s lyric collection, Ritusamharam is perhaps the simplest and lightest of the great poet’s seven extant works, which include two each of epic and lyrical poetry, and three dramatic plays. It also seems to be, at present, the least read or remembered, quoted or translated of all the seven. This comparative inattention—the background to which is noted later—also underlines the need for a fresh translation of this work for today’s general readership in contemporary English. Translated here directly from the original Sanskrit, with the title rendered as A Gathering of Seasons, it is now presented in the following pages as part of the Penguin Classics series on this laureate of letters.

  One may begin with some words about this work and its author. Little is known definitely about the latter’s life, perhaps during the fifth-century AD Gupta empire. But his standing has always been very high:

  In the count of ancient poets,

  Kalidasa does at the first place stay:

  for the lack of one comparable,

  the next is nameless to this day. 1

  This well-known tribute to Kalidasa, written by an eminent poet-critic in the fourteenth-century Vijayanagara empire almost a thousand years after the great poet’s time—and as many years before the present—remains a testimony to his continuing fame. This celebrity also spread during the last two centuries to the Western world, and installed him in the literary pantheon there. His work is now described in the Encyclopedia Americana as filled with ‘an unvarying freshness of inspiration and charm, delightful imagery and fancy, profound insights into emotions, and a oneness with the phenomenon of nature. Moreover, the fluidity and beauty of language are probably unmatched.’ 2

  As for Ritusamharam, it is a collection of subhashita, or ‘well said’ poetic epigrams about the different seasons according to which ancient Indians divided the whole year. This work consists of six cantos of lyrical verses—one for each season. Four of these—that is, spring, summer, autumn and winter—are well known all over the world. There is also the rainy or monsoon season, a regular feature of South Asia. Yet another—translated here as ‘The Onset of Winter’—is a season that was seen in older times as marking the change from autumn to winter. Each of the six seasons covered two lunar months of the ancient Indian calendar.

  The accolades showered on Kalidasa’s other creations are well known. The poetry presented here has also been praised by many modern scholars. One may start with Dr S. Radhakrishnan, scholar and second President of India, who wrote in his overall introduction to the collection of Kalidasa’s works published by India’s national academy of letters, the Sahitya Akademi:3 ‘The Ritusamhara gives a moving account of the six seasons. It reveals not only Kalidasa’s vision of nature’s beauty, but also an understanding of human moods and desires.’

  A more recent and specific comment, made a quarter century later, was offered by R.P. Dwivedi, the compiler of this work’s critical edition that finally completed the Sahitya Akademi’s collection mentioned above.4 ‘It is a poem of a special type,’ he opined. ‘It does not have a human protagonist nor does it propound any philosophic or religious dogma. It is probably the finest example of secular poetry, concerned with the vivid portrayal . . . of the seasonal cycle . . . Nowhere else . . . do we find such a portrayal of the rural countryside . . . The simplicity of the poem’s theme is matched by the simplicity of its technique . . . and constitutes the fundamental charm of the poem.’

  To these learned comments from modern India, one may add some from long-respected Sanskrit scholars abroad. British savant A.B. Keith5 wrote that in this work ‘Kalidasa exhibits delicate observation and loving sympathy with nature’, together with ‘the relation of the diverse moods of the year with the loves of man and maiden’.

  The eminent Austrian historian of Sanskrit, M. Winternitz, followed a similar line6. He wrote that ‘the description with the delicate observation of nature, lovely sketches about the happiness of animals and plants, and glowing with often luxurious presentation of amorous pleasures in each of the seasons is one worthy of Kalidasa’.

  To these scholarly observations, one may add the insights of a well-known literary translator of the Ritusamharam from around seventy-five years ago. This was the Sanskritist and political activist R.S. Pandit, who also translated some other Sanskrit works. Kalidasa, Pandit commented, ‘sees the whole year with his mind’s eye . . . He describes not merely the seasons in flux, but the feelings awakened by the changing seasons in every pair of lovers . . . Briefly, the poem is a lovers’ calendar for the young and the warm-hearted . . . And it is expected that the reader, who is not so young, will respond to the poet’s mood by remembering his own youth . . . with the joy of recapture.’7

  For this translator too, it has been a joy to read this work in the original. To then render it directly into free verse, in the English of today, has been a no-less enjoyable challenge. The language of these lyric verses is simple, largely free of alamkaras or poetic figures of speech typical of classical Sanskrit, and thus easier to follow. Their imagery is picturesque and vibrant. The beauties of nature and the charm of human relations invoked in them do not appear to have any hidden or abstruse meaning other than what is actually said. What they do reveal is the poet’s deep feeling for natural scenes and human emotions portrayed in these poems.

  The invocations in Ritusamharam bring natural features to life. These include light and darkness, flaming fire and streaming rain, fierce heat and frosty cold, winds and clouds, hills and rivers, trees and flowers, farms and fields. Also enlivened are animals, big and small, gentle or fierce, ranging from lions to elephants, pigs to buffaloes, frogs to beetles, bees to serpents. Birds of all kinds, from peacocks to cuckoos and geese, are also portrayed in lively detail. The splendour of nature is related colourfully to human beauty, longing and eagerness, and the delights of union between lovers. There is little of the verbal jugglery common in later Sanskrit verse. This translation too has been presented in terms relatively straightforward and more congenial for modern tastes.

  The original language of these verses is also noteworthy for a certain evident repetition: of words, phrases and images. The well-known and still-studied century-old critique of this work by scholar M.R. Kale,8 with a commentary in Sanskrit, specifies fifty-nine instances of such repetition from a ‘long . . . and by no means exhaustive’ list. Some of this is also reflected in the present translation which attempts fidelity, both to the original wording of the text and to its spirit and overall lyrical flow.

  This repetition also provides some explanation to the comparatively lower standing of this work amidst other Kalidasa classics as mentioned earlier. Kale commented that it is written in ‘a style which falls below the level of Kalidasa’s other works’. He added that ‘the doubt about its authorship is further strengthened by the fact that Mallinatha, who has written commentaries on Raghuvamsam, Kumarasambhavam and Meghadutam, did not recognize any fourth poem by the same author’. Mallinatha is a highly regarded and still-studied fifteenth-century literary commentator of Sanskrit texts. He is also not alone in his exclusion of Ritusamharam from the list of Kalidasa’s works commented on. Dwivedi lists ten o
ther well-known Sanskrit writers on poetics, ranging from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries, who have also, in his words, ‘ignored this poem for purposes of illustration’.9 This too contributed to doubts about the authorship of the work.

  This question was long debated, with scholars like Keith pointing to excerpt quotations from Ritusamharam included in several ancient anthologies of Sanskrit verse. ‘The fact that the writers on poetics do not cite from this poem,’ he stated, ‘has an obvious explanation in the same fact: these writers never exhibit the slightest trace of liking what is simple’.10 A conclusion eventually emerged through the scholarship of distinguished academics like V.V. Mirashi and N.R. Navlekar, and Ritusamharam has now been accepted as a work of Kalidasa’, albeit in a simpler language and perhaps from his younger days.11

  A historical note may be added here about the location and gradation of this work in modern times of Western influence. The very first text to be translated from Sanskrit into English was the Bhagavadgita by East India Company official Charles Williams in 1784, and carried a laudatory introduction by the then British governor-general Warren Hastings, contributing to further serious Western study of scriptural works from ancient India. The second was Hitopadesa by the same translator in 1787, and the third was the oft-cited translation of Kalidasa’s Shakuntalam by Sir William Jones in 1789, which was much praised at the time by well-known European literary figures like Goethe, Herder and Schiller, and was instrumental in bringing Kalidasa and Sanskrit poetry to a broader Western public.

  There followed translations of the poet’s Meghadutam by H.H. Wilson in 1813, Kumarasambhavam by R.T. Griffith in 1879, and Raghuvamsam by G.R. Nandargikar of Pune also in 1879. Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, Kalidasa and his works were already well known, as indeed were various scriptural works.

  The Ritusamharam seems to have been a part of this renewed interest at the beginning. It was the first Sanskrit text printed and published in Calcutta as far back as 1792. A critical edition appeared in Leipzig, Germany, in 1840, followed by others in Calcutta, Poona, Bombay and Varanasi from 1869. During the nineteenth century, however, the authenticity of its authorship came into doubt as mentioned above. But interest has now revived. Translations into English and other languages have appeared in India in recent years, including one that was published in 1990 at Arizona State University, USA12.

  The time thus seemed ripe for a new translation for present-day readers. It has been prepared from the original text published in the national Sahitya Akademi collection13. This text has also been cross-checked with that of Kale14. Both contain some additional verses as appendices with mention of their manuscript sources. The sixteen verses common to both these appendices have been included here with their seasonal headings as an additional chapter to further convey the spirit of the work to the reader. The original text used consists of 141 lyrical verses spread over the six seasonal cantos. With these additions, this translation has a total of 157 verses on seasons and life, nature and mankind. Names of plants have mostly been left in the original Sanskrit, but put in italics and explained in the notes where I have largely followed the useful explanations available in R.S. Pandit’s translation referred to earlier.

  In conclusion, I would like to thank Penguin Random House for inviting me to undertake this work, and their editor Ambar Sahil Chatterjee for his kind and thoughtful support throughout. My thanks also to Shatarupa Ghoshal for copyediting this book for publication. I am further grateful to Shafali Bhatt of the India International Centre Library, New Delhi, and Christina Tooulias-Santolin of the Robarts Library, Toronto, Canada, for all their help with the reference material.

  The present translation was begun in Delhi, appropriately, as the summer of 2017 commenced, and then continued during our seasonal visits to our children abroad. The second canto was completed in the home of our son Vikram and daughter-in-law Annika, and the rest in that of our daughter Sharada. I am deeply grateful to them all, particularly for their assistance and guidance with computers. My special thanks to Sharada, on whose device most of the drafts were typed. My wife, Priti, was as always a pillar of support in everything, and my gratitude to her is hard as ever to express in words.

  This new book is dedicated to our dear daughter-in-law Annika who has brought a new spirit into our lives. It is my fond hope that it will provide her a glimpse both of the poetic heritage it carries and of our deep love for her.

  New Delhi

  April 2018

  A.N.D.H.

  CANTO 1

  Summer

  1

  Summer has arrived, my dear.

  The sun is fierce, the moon sought after;

  to plunge in pools of shaded water

  is to be immersed in pleasure;

  lovely is the end of day

  when desire calmed does stay.

  2

  The night, the moon, dark waters with

  somewhere in them a wondrous fountain,

  the coolth of sandal paste and gems:

  all of these, my love, are ways

  for people to enjoy the summer.

  3

  A pleasing house, a balmy terrace,

  wine rippling with a sweetheart’s breath,

  the music of a well-strung lute

  that kindles the lamp of love:

  all these do give joy to lovers

  on a summer night.

  4

  With comely hips,

  silk draped and girdled;

  sandal paste upon their breasts

  that are with garlands ornamented;

  and hair scented after bathing,

  women soothe the feverish heat

  that lovers experience.

  5

  Wide-hipped damsels—their slim feet

  reddened with the dye from lac,

  and adorned with tinkling anklet bells

  that sound notes at every step,

  like chirping swans—do turn the minds

  of people to thoughts of love.

  6

  Which heart will not

  be filled with longing

  for breasts besmeared

  with sandal paste,

  a garland white

  as snow around them,

  and a girdle golden

  round the hips?

  7

  As beads of sweat begin appearing

  on their limbs and at the joints,

  women in the bloom of youth

  take off the heavy garments

  from their upward-thrusting breasts,

  and put on them mantles

  made of muslin fine.

  8

  With a fragrant breeze from fans

  in sandal-scented water moistened,

  a garland looped around the bosom,

  and the soft music of a lute,

  desire, that seemed asleep,

  is as if awake today.

  9

  All night gazing, unrestrained,

  at the faces of women sleeping

  tranquilly on terraces white,

  the moon, always with longing filled,

  but now ashamed, starts turning pale

  as the darkness of night depletes.

  10

  The wind may be unbearable,

  so laden with dust it is;

  the earth may be lying scorched

  in the fierce blaze from the sun;

  but the traveller, his mind aflame

  with the fire of separation

  from his sweetheart, dearly loved,

  does not even think of the heat.

  11

  In that heat, the animals too

  suffer greatly—their mouths are

  dry and parched with a terrible thirst;

  looking at the sky, so sombre,

  as if with sprinklings of dark powder,

  and imagining that a sign of water,

  they run towards another forest.

  12

  With roaming glances, amo
rous,

  flashed together with a smile,

  playful damsels quickly spark

  desire’s flame within the hearts

  of travellers: just like the moon

  lighting up the eventide.

  13

  Troubled by the sun’s hot rays,

  scorched by the pathway’s burning sand,

  no longer coiled, its hood contracted,

  the cobra slowly pants and lies

  as it now rests beneath the peacock.

  14

  From muddy water, put on boil

  by the sharp rays of the sun,

  the frog has now leapt out

  to sit under the shade provided

  by the hood of a thirsty serpent.

  15

  Its prowess and strength affected

  by the agony of a thirst immense,

  with hard gasps, a quivering mane,

  a lolling tongue and jaws agape,

  the lion, lord of beasts, does not

  stalk an elephant, though nearby.

  16

  Scalded by the sun’s hot rays,

  wracked with thirst, and seeking more

  than the few droplets of water

  in its parched throat,

  the elephant now is not afraid

  even of the lion.

  17

  The peacocks too—as if on fire

  with the blazing rays of the sun,

  their minds and bodies tired—

  do not kill the nearby snakes

  that have taken shelter in